Salt
by Cassiopeia'sFreckles
Summary: You can find salt in a lot of places; an ocean, your tears and even sometimes rubbed into wounds. They got so very close to letting themselves have everything they wanted. Link X Male Sheik


Hello and thank you for stopping by my fic, I hope you enjoy it. An extra thank you if you've read any of my previous ones and an extra, extra thank you with sprinkles if you've liked or reviewed them, you excellent example of human existence!  
Thanks again,  
Freckles

* * *

Salt in tears

And salt in wounds

And salt in the greyish sea

That one soul sailed

Away from another,

To hide behind the distance in between

…

They found a cooling bed,

An empty room,

And both at once they knew

They had suspected all along

What the missing one would do

…

But our Fugitive

All mired in salt,

Took away more than his own heart

He left behind an Empty Man

Who, when looking at those stark four walls,

Fell, resolutely, apart

…

The Empty Man dreamt

While awake

Of first meetings under forest light,

Of a figure,

Haloed by the misty dew,

All navy-gold against green behind

…

`Hero I have songs for you,

The Goddesses bid you learn them well',

Eyes were kept averted as

Long fingers pulled at slender strings,

Beauty caged in thorns and dust

Taught him how the forest sings

…

He sat, alone, hours after

Rimed with salty sweat,

The contents of his stomach there

Out of sight but not forgotten,

Brought up by the things he'd done

And how he had once been unrotten

…

He closed his eyes and conjured

A figure of navy-gold

Until the shaking of his hands

Became a shaking in his soul

…

Moths will find a flame

And a compass will find the pole,

They found each other fascinating

They found themselves not whole

…

They crept around each other

Never touching but never far,

One half cautious

The other frostbite cold,

With every glance they shared

Addiction fought control

…

The Fugitive stared out

Across the rippling greyish green,

He tried to bundle up the memories

And leave them out at sea

…

But, crawling,

from their darkened corner,

They wrapped him in the clammy heat

Of second meetings painted crimson,

Stained scarlet by his need

…

`Hero, listen well,

I've not time to teach you twice'

He bit his lip

Until he tasted blood

Schooled indifference tripping on the lie

…

He was given a duty, a path,

A service

He was under no illusions,

He could not hope for this

…

He did though

And saw all the things he wanted,

Reflected by shimmer heat,

But he wouldn't take what the Goddesses hadn't offered

He wouldn't let himself be weak

…

Into darker depths

And through fugue-ing heat,

Clutching at heatstroke images

Of navy-gold on green,

The Hero, once more,

Rendered his hands unclean

…

He ached after simple things

A bath, a bed

A rest,

Hands on his,

Sweat salted skin pressed chest to chest

…

He loathed lonely nights,

Wedged,

Miniscule between the earth and sky,

He hated the freezing hours

Sunless, and plagued by even colder scarlet eyes

…

He wanted,

Tripping,

Stumbling,

Falling into places he couldn't name,

He spun into galaxies of navy-gold

And found himself remade

…

Built all anew,

A fledging solar system

With a red giant for a sun,

But what good was this re-forging

Now that he is Empty

And his star burnt out and gone

…

He finds himself standing

In all the places it used to shine

But cannot shake them out of winter

Cannot bring them into light

…

There is little sleep

And fewer dreams

And those he has push him underneath,

Into syrup thick anguish

That trickles to his lungs and denies his right to breath

…

He does not remember well

What happened in between

Sliding beneath the lake

And rising from its surface

Mockingly serene

…

He was dragged, dripping,

Onto a shore,

His body bent and cruelly twisted

His heart had greyed

His soul was spent and he was altogether wasted

…

He shuddered as his lungs hacked up

A mix of hope and water,

Long fingers gently traced his back

`Stay with me, remember what you've fought for'

…

He purred into the touch

He knew that hand

He'd imagined how it would feel,

A little calloused,

Beautifully soft

But, most importantly, real

…

Rain spatter,

Sea spatter,

He can't escape the salt,

The Fugitive made crystalline

By memories

Of a body to exalt

…

He knows what made him do it

He knows it was the fear,

That the Hero gone, lost,

Was so very much more that he could bear

…

A shaking body

Under his shaking hand

A fist sliding into his hair,

He pulled them tighter

Blended them together

They drank each other's air

…

Lying beside him, asleep,

Was the shape of his whole world,

He felt the soft rise and fall

Of breathing next to him

Where his heart was neatly curled

…

He felt his soul soaring,

He'd found all the parts of him that were missing,

But he knows

The Goddesses never meant the Hero to be for him,

He cannot hope for this

This isn't how it goes

…

He cannot hope for this

This isn't how it goes

He isn't meant for this

His soul comes crashing low

…

He leaves behind salt wet patches

And collects his things to go,

Bundles up everything he ever wanted

This is how it goes

…

He wakes up cold

He won't open his eyes,

Doesn't have to to know he's alone,

He'd had everything he'd ever wanted

There's no point in not letting tears flow

…

Why try to forget?

He will not, he will cling to it,

They happened

He felt it

He worshipped it

And, even Empty, he will sing of it

…

He carried on

Green outside but grey within,

He had a duty to uphold,

But he knows himself

He is stronger now

For having felt the fire before the cold

…

He will wait

He will dissolve the hanging clouds

He will chase away the dark

He will do what he needs to set them free,

Make them duty-less

To let their lives finally start

…

His anger is fever bright

Not at himself

Not at the body he craves to have beside him,

At the world

At its sickness

At all the things it has denied him

…

A well, a graveyard

A meeting,

One doesn't look the other cannot look away,

There are tundras between them,

Ice cold fear

And frostbite neither one can stand to brave

…

They have gone full circle

Looping around to where they began,

Exquisitely estranged,

At cross purposes now more than ever

Hoping, wanting, hurting

But helplessly constrained

…

Horror bright

Horror many

Horror soul seepingly deep,

Out of darkness

Into darkness

Every inch of him will weep

…

He watched his Hero crawl

And felt his insides crawl with him,

He was sick of himself

Sick of how much he wanted to give in

…

He was sick of how much

He wanted to be happy

But his happiness was never part of the plan,

They had told him

Since he was boy

He was a thing to be used and no more than that

…

The Empty Man casts his eyes

Out across the tumbling water

Tastes salt mist on his tongue,

If he must choose between

Life in light and life in shade

He will go searching for his sun

…

One more dance

One more brush with the ache

One more wash of all their feelings,

One more cavern

One more meeting

…

The sand weighs him down

The exhaustion even more,

Is it ending?

It is ending

He wishes he could remember what it was for

…

Between his duty

And his wanting

He doesn't know who he is,

He finds he can't remember

Anything of what he was

Before all of this

…

All he knows now

Is that he reflects his sun

Even though it refuses to shine,

He finds himself a waning moon

Barely alight

Diffuse and ill-defined

…

Mechanical and thoughtless,

He no longer finds himself revolted

When he cuts down things that were alive,

He wonders if along the way

Some parts of him have burnt away

And died

…

Just as The Fugitive is absent now

He was absent once before,

Banned and barred

From The Ending

Resigned to watching from afar

…

When he took his place

As a footnote

And watched the main cast take their bows,

He realized he was weightless

He had no purpose now

…

He was a thread

All used up

Inside the weft and weave

Of the Goddesses' greater plan,

There was nothing left

The insides of him whispered 'leave'

…

And so he did,

And so he did

And left behind

The only one

Who could have eased his soul,

Who could have settled his mind

…

Salt in tears

And salt in wounds

And salt in the greyish sea

That one soul sailed

Towards the other,

To remove the distance in between

* * *

Because we all needed a fic via the medium of narrative poem right? Honestly, I just wanted to see if I could and the result wasn't abjectly terrible so I figured I'd share it. Thank you for sticking with me through roughly 1500 words of questionable rhymes and an awkward, ever-changing meter, you deserve both a medal and a cookie.  
Freckles


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